


Speechless

by pettiot



Category: Final Fantasy XII
Genre: Consent Issues, Crossdressing, M/M, Substitution, Unrequited Lust, the opposite of negotiated kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-02
Updated: 2010-08-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:29:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22303420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pettiot/pseuds/pettiot
Summary: Vossler's hands map the pirate, learn him, taking a rougher path than any woman would let him; the pirate holds under the pressure.
Relationships: Vossler/Balthier, unrequited vossler-->ashelia
Kudos: 2





	Speechless

The thought appeals almost too much: to simply keep the pirate naked.

The muscle of him suggests the muscle of a coeurl, elongated, rangy. Vossler knows, a walker's muscle, not even a runner's, spare and sufficient. This is not the shape of a man who stands and fights, who carries the weight of war along with full plate. This lean intensity finds its effectiveness in one purpose only, to skulk – to _flee_.

The novelty of form tightens Vossler's intent like a vice on his reason. His fingers are crude along the length of the pirate's limbs as they cannot be on another's, his palms flat and fingertips wide. A flushed ripple tracks his path along that pale skin, the rising blood, the flex of muscle and vein. The pirate's breath quickens. Skin slides under that pressure instead of ripping, doused slick with oil to mask the masculine grain, satin over his cord. Vossler's hands map the pirate, learn him, taking a rougher path than any woman would let him; the pirate holds under the pressure.

Vossler's lip curls, almost unwillingly. He bites it back down, teeth sharp, catching on rough skin, feels the stubble on his upper lip. He needs to shave, and won't. His cutthroat needs all its edge for this.

As Vossler sinks to his knees, the pirate smiles, altogether too knowing for a young man but that a pirate's lifestyle barely allows for youth, and not at all for innocence. Vossler sets his blade to the bone of the pirate's ankle, and he cannot discern which emotion swells his own contrary lust, that Balthier's lack of innocence pleases or disgusts him.

The hair on the pirate's leg strips clean, smoothly, oil gathering on the blade. Vossler wipes on a steaming cloth, sets hot blade to flesh again, strips away further curls of dark gold. The pirate's thighs are sparsely feathered, his chest not at all; his arms, around and beneath, stripped in a matter of moments. He stands lightly, his motion surrendered with a trust that makes Vossler's lust burn; Vossler but curls thick fingers around a wrist and the pirate's arm lengthens obligingly, turns to bare the hair to Vossler's blade.

The temptation thickens Vossler's throat, chokes his voice. His breath comes heavy, and he cannot control it. The blade is dangerously sharp. The pirate would bleed, unknowing—

It takes more care to shave the rest, lathered soap instead of just oil, a fresh-steaming cloth. Balthier's cheeks first, stripping away the vanity of his sideburns, the stubbled shadow along his jaw. Balthier's breath comes hard enough that Vossler holds his own to avoid the scent of it, full spice and wine.

The pirate arrays himself on the corner of the bed unbidden, loose-limbed, so willing where Vossler expects only more resistance. Kneeling between his legs, Vossler shoulders him open too easily, cannot help but see, smell the lust rising from this handling. The lather layers that scent with its own, of lilac and lilies, a mask, not a true disguise. The pirate's fingers, lax on his own thigh, twitch at the feel of the blade, at Vossler's touch. Some ken keeps the pirate from comment, from touching Vossler's head, hair, shoulder: the sound of Balthier's voice, his touch, would shatter this. Vossler would not be held accountable for what followed.

The corset does not look sufficient to span the depth of the pirate's ribs. Vossler has him stand, palms against the wall, ignores the tilt of his hips as best he can. The lacing progresses, painstakingly slow; the refinement of garb like this does not suit Vossler's fingers, narrow eyelets where he wants buckles, laces of satin where he wants straps of leather. The cords have been woven with thread-of-mythril as well as satin; they do not break as Vossler tugs them tight from the base of the pirate's spine to the breadth of his ribcage.

The pirate moves then, arching to look back over his shoulder as Vossler leans close. Vossler stops, his breath hissing, and for a moment sees nothing, tastes nothing but lust, chokingly so. The posture elongates the pirate's neck, tilts his hips, curves his spine. It is too graceful a motion for this strain; Vossler sets his knuckles along Balthier's jaw, pushes without restraint. The pirate's head cracks forward, looking only straight ahead, and he does not turn again.

The laces are strong, strong enough for this purpose. Vossler applies himself, until satin and mythril sing under the strain. Balthier chokes, a wild sound; Vossler bites the inside of his cheek, does not desist. Tighter, tighter, until neither of them can breathe, until the boned corsetry creaks. The pirate's breath comes short, shallow, hard. No words left in this black satin.

Unwary, Balthier staggers when Vossler takes him by the shoulders and jerks; the pirate stumbles, stiff, falls face first into spread of the bed. Vossler mounts, feels the curve of the pirate's arse against his shin, ignores it to plant his knee in the small of Balthier's back. The leverage improves like this, the pirate's resistance lost in bedsheets; the corset strains another dual-sided inch closer. Vossler swallows his own grunt, straining until the crossed cord holds boned satin edges in a perfect taper.

Vossler hisses when the door cracks open, but will not release the laces. The viera stares within, her fingers curling on the doorframe, click of claw a faint noise over the stutter of Balthier's breath. Vossler meets her eyes, reads nothing therein, gives nothing out.

"That corset—" she says.

Balthier laughs, breathless; Vossler has heard the like before on a man with a broken spine, control lost over all flesh below the line of his shoulders. "Not yours." Almost a groan. "Therefore please, not your concern."

"As you will."

The viera leaves without further speech. That does not gladden Vossler, rather bemused, outraged at her acceptance of this, wrongness, a lie, perhaps one that the pirate has told too many times before. He shifts his knee higher, his weight planted to fix the tension of the laces as he ties them in place. Balthier cannot stand after that; he holds out a hand, limp. Vossler has to lift him, hold him steady against his own body until Balthier's balance returns, the blood falling from his cheeks.

The curve of him tells a lie to Vossler's arms; a lie that feels like remembrance. Vossler lets his hand linger, unwilling as it is. Such slenderness to his waist, impossibly slight, impossibly firm. Bound without release. The layered ruche of the corset even makes a lie of his chest, a suggestion of slight, lace-masked, ruffle-clouded curve where there is none. Vossler's lust clouds also, his intent wavering.

The illusion lasts until the pirate turns to the mirror. The width of his shoulders is undeniably masculine, the long muscle of his arms, forearm and bicep both. He seats himself nevertheless, hissing as he does so; he is tauntingly erect, spine and shaft both. He sets kohl to his eyes, works deftly with a brush and the third finger of his left hand. Vossler watches, despises the evident practice behind that skill even as he wants –

He stops the pirate when he would put colour to his lips.

"Not," Vossler says, "that," much hoarser than he thought he would be, "it will smear."

The pirate smiles again, knowing with thick-lashed eyes and pale lips, so that Vossler aches with the ferocity of his focus.

Standing, the skirt Balthier wraps himself with does much to alleviate the width of his shoulders with its counterpoint balance, three layers of deepening silk softening his legs, thickening his hips. He wears nothing under; the swell of his masculinity a prominence against the fabric. Vossler steps within reach, closes his fist in the silk, finds the pirate's heat and hardness. Balthier does not cease in his preparations. He ties further silk around his shoulders, looped at the back of his neck, draped around his arms and knotted behind. That veil shrouds the breadth of his shoulders. He is all curve now where length defined him before, the camber from rib to waist and out to silk-layered hip, the grace of his hands, long fingered, the elegance of his wrists.

Vossler's next breath resonates, pitched; Balthier's cock thickens in his palm, live.

Vossler lets his fingers spread, deeper, tightening. It cannot be a pleasant touch, that much force, but the pirate's expression does not change as he lifts the last piece from the dresser, a lady's hat more a circlet than a sunshade, constructed of falls of starched lace and veils: a quicker solution than a wig, Balthier had apologised, especially at such short notice. He dons it with such grace, surely exaggerated now.

Archadian fashion, Vossler reminds himself, striving for thought when thirst would reign in its stead. Archadian, and dark-clad like a city whore. Despite the muteness of his lips, Balthier's eyes are impossibly coloured against the kohl. When Vossler had thought them grey and flat instead the ocean's intensity stares out at him, an unexpected variance under the fall of that Archadian lace.

Archadian, lace and fashion and false femaleness, and Vossler's choice so, because to dress the pirate in Dalmascan fashion, bare shouldered, navel exposed, that would be too—

"—much," Balthier breathes, his hand closing on Vossler's, pulling. "Too much. Let go."

Balthier's grip tightens until the bones in Vossler's wrist shift, grating. He must remind himself, even as Balthier's thickness heats his palm, that he does not face any form of a woman here. Eye to eye, shoulder to shoulder, Vossler cannot assume the pirate's strength will not match his own. The pirate has undoubtedly been in worse situations than this.

"On the bed," Vossler says, and adds, viscous, vicious, vile, "if you please."

"And waste this endeavour? I think otherwise. I insist on entertainment first after that much effort."

Vossler feels his shoulders flex, ripple. It takes considerable effort to restrain his curse, to hold his fists at his side. Balthier's eyes drape, as languid as silk, across the bare muscle of Vossler's arms. The pirate has the gall to reach out a hand, a delicate touch despite the callus of his palm, sliding fingers along tense forearm, to curl in the crook of Vossler's elbow.

"Do you want me as a whore?" Balthier asks, breathy, and Vossler despises the rise and fall of his voice, too heavy, too male. The corset creaks, lilac and lilies heavy in the air between them.

"What are you, if not that?"

"Why," says Balthier, "a lady, certainly. It is what I thought you wanted when I sought this dress, a delicate highborn--"

Vossler growls, grabs the pirate by his waist. The bound flesh there is as dense as desire, tight enough that Vossler's lust demands this; his fist flies, too long restrained. But deprived of his gun, speed is Balthier's defence. Vossler feels him recoil from rude fingers with a shallow gasp, but of the next the pirate's hands are too damned quick to let the blow connect, too forceful.

Vossler swears, and staggers two steps back. Balthier rubs his knuckles, still smiling. Dangerously. He'll bruise, later.

"A nice night includes wine and fine dining." Balthier's eyes glitter in the depth of that lace-veiled shadow. Still smiling. Vossler almost admires him then, through the frustration, the fury. Rabanastre's eyes may not be as sharp as the ones who dwell in Archades' shadows, but Vossler is too recognisable, too well known; this tale will not be silent long if it leaves these walls. "But you, Sir—" and the pirate shows his teeth then "—are not a very nice knight. A shame if your own lady would discover such a thing."

Vossler spits his despite. "…you pirates have no regard for _propriety_."

"After we dine, you may follow that line of thought to its inevitable end."

"May I." Vossler swallows the growl.

"You are fortunate that that end is one for which our desires are mutually compatible." Balthier turns to the door, pauses, looks over his shoulder. The pirate _knows_ , then, what that posture does to his scarce, false curves, the crease of light caressing black satin, the shift of his weight to one leg, the tilt of his hip. "Worry not of your reputation. There's a second way out to be had. Your princess shall have scarce opportunity to catch you."

Restraint cannot avail either of them then, satin cord nor mythril motivation, not with the pirate's back turned. Vossler slams him against the wall, lace crumpling, corset creaking even as Balthier arches against the force of Vossler's spite. His knee forces between skirted thighs, fingers lifting, questing along smooth legs; the underskirt rips with a ferocity that betrays like lust. Balthier laughs then, too breathy, too softly considering how his cheekbone hit the wall, enough to bruise; Vossler finds Balthier's bare lips, side on like that, spice and wine, too knowing, too cruel. Balthier does not turn away, and he gives more of teeth than tongue, all bite without burden.

" _After_ dinner," Balthier says, still laughing, like a sigh, his voice too goddamned deep. The curl of his hips twists his spoils away from Vossler's seeking fingers; he straightens, pushes away from the wall, turns. "Or you'll find your prodigious appetite ruined."

"Bastard."

"But _I_ am a lady," Balthier says. Too merrily. Too knowingly. "So say 'bitch', if you please. For is that not what you truly want to call her?"

The trick, Vossler realises, is to strike while the pirate's back is turned, when his speed is compromised by his constraining garb. Balthier crumples at the second blow, slack-jawed, eyes rolling: Vossler catches him before he hits the ground, ignores the unrestrained ache that such image of gallantry causes, a swooning lady and her dependent balance.

He carries Balthier to the bed and arrays him there.

Speechless, the illusion improves. It is always imperfect. But it is enough.


End file.
